Article March 31, 1923 Issue

The True Leaving

KATHERINE E. VARGA

THERE is brief sentence on page 182 of our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, which when read and pondered never fails to make our problem seem simpler and our advancement in the truth more rapid. It is, "The demands of God appeal to thought only." This statement has been a help to me many times; but recently it threw such light on a citation from Science and Health, given in a Lesson-Sermon, that I have desired to share it. The passage referred to is this (p. 192): "We are Christian Scientists, only as we quit our reliance upon that which is false and grasp the true. We are not Christian Scientists until we leave all for Christ." The latter part of the citation, "We are not Christian Scientists until we leave all for Christ," especially interested me.

A woman had come to my home, not long before, selling religious literature. I had told her I was not interested, but she was very insistent, finally asking my reason for refusing to buy. I replied that I was a student of Christian Science and was entirely satisfied with its true and beautiful teaching. She stated emphatically that she could never believe in Christian Science, her reason being that she believed Christian Scientists were worldly. She then asked me if I had left all for Christ. I answered that I knew I had not but that I was earnestly striving daily to be better in every way. She said she had already left all for Christ; and to her that decided the point that Christian Science was inferior as a religion.

When the above quotation came in the Lesson-Sermon shortly afterward, the incident was recalled and caused me to consider, prayerfully, the deep and vital meaning of the often used phrase to "leave all for Christ." Our thinking is so apt to be material, and the false teaching of so-called theology is so generally accepted, that for many of us leaving all for Christ has meant a renunciation of things, not thoughts, even though Scriptural instruction tells us plainly that as a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he." Sometimes the things to be given up are harmless in themselves; and about the only effect produced is to make the one renouncing them feel he has left something for Christ, when in fact he may not be a particle more Christlike than before. We know that though one were completely exiled from the so-called pleasures and sins of the world, yet took with him evil thoughts,—malice, revenge, hatred, and the like,—the mere isolation could not make him more acceptable in the sight of God. "The demands of God appeal to thought only," we read in our textbook; and does not this cover the question completely? For as we relinquish our false thinking, the effects of the false beliefs disappear.

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